Whether you intend to use SharePoint as a dedicated internal content management system, have a need for forms processing or merely want a platform for social computing, this is not a product that can be simply turned over to the IT department to install and manage. 

Organizations that want to accomplish the most with SharePoint will need to align business and IT teams to constructively design a specific approach or strategy – reason simply, SharePoint seems easy to use, but somewhat difficult to master. 

The first and foremost step, develop a strategy around business needs.

What are your business needs and how can SharePoint help in addressing those needs? The following are examples of business requirements ahead of a SharePoint install:

1. Improve communications and documentation between diverse locations by providing a central repository for production procedures and information
2. Provide a method for documentation change management sharing information
3. Reduce the cost and time of resolving problems by providing a central portal for users (staff or employees) to search processes, procedures and get up to date documentation
4. Provide the ability to work on documentation at the earliest emergence, before interaction with other processes and large volumes of users
5. Project managers can share documents and collaborate with other users on projects; using an integrated set of tools
6. Provide collaboration tools such as wiki’s and blogs within the context of an intranet allowing feedback, surveying and access to versioned documents  

Once these objectives have been defined, it will be much easier to align goals to SharePoint technology.   

LEARN MORE:

From Microsoft

• Topics to consider before deploying SharePoint Products and Technologies

• Office SharePoint Server 2007 Technical Library in Compiled Help format

• Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit v3.0 x86

• Analyzing Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Usage

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Trial Version

Top 10 Benefits of MS SharePoint Services for Document Management by Positive NPV

The SharePoint Report by CMSWatch

Best

Denice MacDonald

Recently, Stewart Mader from Grow Your Wiki, wrote a timely article on the 5 Effective Wiki Uses--and How Companies Benefit from Them in the Fall edition of Website Magazine. Citing such successful wikis as Wikipedia, Mader stresses that wikis have proven to be valuable tools - yet few companies are using them to their full potential.   

Here is a synopsis of the article citing five examples of how your business can benefit from wikis: 

Project Management - A wiki is ideal for project management because it provides a central hub to organize everthing in one place, streamline workflow, inform on progress and ultimately involve everyone. 

Customer/Client Collaboration - Wikis allow customers and clients to interact - allowing more rapid buyin and productivity. 

Documentation - Wikis are a great vehicle to build content, reports, whitepapers and other resource/technical material offering feedback, progress and input mechanisms. 

Online Community - Wikis allow for ongoing community participation (comments, responses, viral exhange) resulting in content, product or even subject matter to be scrutinized by the participants. 

Policies, FAQ, Guidelines and Best Practices - A wiki can be advantageous for commonly needed information. Editing permissions can be determined so that responsible parties can easily and readily update content.   

Ready to start a wiki?  Consider these great resources:

MediaWiki (The original wiki platform for wikipedia)

TikiWiki (Groupware/CMS (Content Management System) solution)

DokuWiki (Targeted at developer teams, workgroups and small companies)

Confluence (Enterprise-level)

PBwiki  (This one's free and great for beginners)

PhpWiki (Open source)

Wetpaint  (Create a wiki in three easy steps)

Best,

Denice MacDonald